Shakespeare’s Christmas

Chapter Seven

Jack was staying in a different room, since the motel manager was having the bathroom window fixed from the break-in in the room he’d had before.

I was already on edge when we went in, and when Jack sat on one of the stuffed vinyl-covered armchairs, all my systems went on defense. I perched on the edge of the other chair and eyed him warily.

“I saw you last night,” he said without preamble.

“Where?”

He sighed. “Out with your old boyfriend.”

I made my breathing slow, fighting the rage that swept through me. I gripped the armrests of the damn orange chair. “You got back to town early, and you didn’t call me. Did you come back on purpose to spy on me?”

His back stiffened. He was doing a little chair gripping of his own. “Of course not, Lily! I missed you, and I finished what I was doing early, and I drove all afternoon to get back here. Then I saw you in that diner with the cop.”

“Were we kissing, Jack?”

“No.”

“Were we holding hands, Jack?”

“No.”

“Was I looking at him with love, Jack?”

“No.”

“Did he look happy, Jack?”

“No.” Jack bowed his head, rubbed his forehead with his fingertips.

“Let me tell you what happened the last time I went on a date with Chandler McAdoo, Jack.” I bent to his level until he had to look me in the eyes or be a coward. “It was seven years ago, the bad time, and I had been back in Bartley for two months. Chandler and I went to the movies, and then we drove out to the lake, like we’d done when we were kids.”

Jack’s hazel eyes didn’t flinch, and he was listening. I knew it.

“So when we were at the lake, Chandler wanted to kiss me, and I wanted to feel like a real woman again, so I let him. I even enjoyed it… a little. And then it went a little farther, and he pulled my T-shirt up. Want to know what happened then, Jack? Chandler started crying. The scars were real fresh then, red. He cried when he saw my body. And that’s the last I saw of Chandler for seven years.”

A heavy silence settled in the cold motel room.

“Pardon me,” Jack said finally. He was absolutely sincere, not mouthing a social catchall. “Pardon me.”

“Jack, you never believed I was sneaking behind your back.”

“I didn’t?” He looked a little angry and a little amused.

“You gave Varena her present before you even discussed last night with me,” I said. “You knew all along we weren’t… parting.” I had almost used the phrase “breaking up,” but it seemed too childish.

Abruptly, Jack’s face went absolutely still, as if he’d had a revelation of some kind.

He turned his eyes to me. “How could he cry?” Jack asked me. “You are so beautiful.”

I was still speechless, but for another reason. Jack had never said anything remotely like this.

“Don’t pity me,” I said softly.

“Lily, you said I never really doubted you. Now, I say, you know that pity is the last thing I feel for you.”

He lay with his chest to my back, one arm thrown around me. He was still awake, I could tell. I had another hour and a half, by my watch.

I didn’t want to think about Summer Dawn. I didn’t want to think about the dead people littering the path to her recovery.

I wanted to touch Jack. I wanted to twine my fingers in his hair. I wanted to understand his thoughts.

But he was a man with a job to do, and he wanted more than anything in the world to take Summer Dawn back to her parents. While he kept his arm around me and from time to time dropped a kiss on my neck, his thoughts had drifted away from me, and mine had to follow.

Reluctantly, I began to tell him what I’d found: the two memory books, one whole and one mutilated, in Anna Kingery’s room; the absence of the same book at Eve Osborn’s. I told him that Eve Osborn had been to the doctor recently, that I didn’t yet know about Anna. I told him about Anna’s mother… the woman we were assuming was Anna’s mother. And I pulled the plastic-wrapped brush and the birth photo of Anna out of my purse and placed them by Jack’s briefcase.

I rolled over to face him when I’d finished. I don’t know what he saw in my face, but he said, “Damn,” under his breath, and looked away from me.

“Have you learned anything?” I asked, to get that expression off his face.

“Like I said, my trip was pretty much of a washout,” he told me, but not as if he was upset about it. I guess private eyes encounter a lot of dead-end streets. “But early this morning, I wandered into the police station and took Chandler and a guy named Roger out for coffee and doughnuts. Since I used to be a cop, and they wanted to prove that small-town cops can be just as sharp as city cops, they were pretty forthcoming.”

I stroked his hair away from his face and nodded to show him I was listening. I didn’t want to tell him they’d have told him nothing if Chandler hadn’t checked up on him and talked to me about him.

“They told me the pipe recovered in the alley was definitely the one used to kill the doctor and his nurse,” Jack said. “And Christopher Sims’s fingerprints were nowhere on it. The pipe has a rusty surface, and some cloth had been run over it. Whoever tried to clean it didn’t do a good job. He left one partial. It doesn’t match Sims’s. He’s still in custody for the purse snatching, but I don’t think he’ll be charged with the murder any time soon.”

“Is he making sense?”

“Not a lot. He told the police he’d had a lot of visitors in his new home, which I gather means the alley behind the stores. That location in the alley is close to every father in this case. Jess O’Shea came to visit Sims as a minister, Emory works in Makepeace Furniture, which backs onto that alley, and Kingery’s pharmacy is a block away.”

“I noticed that.”

“Of course you did,” he said and bent to kiss me. My arms went around his neck, and the kiss lasted longer than he thought it was going to. “I want you again,” he told me, his voice low and rough.

“I noticed that, too.” I pressed against him gently. “But the wedding is tomorrow. Let me tell you about tonight. Since I’m going to baby-sit all the children-Eve, the baby, Krista, Luke, and Anna-at the O’Sheas’ house, maybe I can learn something from the children, or from being in that house.”

“Where are all the parents going?”

“To a dinner. It’s a couples thing, so I was glad to get out of it.”

“Who would they have paired you with?” Jack asked.

I realized for the first time that I was causing a hostess some seating problems. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess that friend of Dill’s, Berry Duff.”

“Has he been by your folks’ much?”

“No, I think he went right home after the rehearsal dinner. He’ll come back into town today, if I remember right, and spend the night somewhere here in town. I guess here at the motel.”

“He admired you.”

“Sure, I’m everyone’s dream girl,” I said, hearing the sharp edge in my voice, unable to stop it.

“Did you like him?”

What the hell was this? “He’s nice enough,” I said.

“You could be with him,” he said. His light hazel eyes fixed on mine. He didn’t blink. “He wouldn’t drag you into things like this.”

“Hmmm,” I said thoughtfully, “Berry is awful cute… and he has his own farm. Varena was telling me how beautiful his house is. It’s part of the spring garden tour.”

For a second Jack’s face was a real picture. Then he pounced on me. He pinned me by the shoulders and scooted his body sideways until it lay over mine.

“Are you teasing me, house cleaner?”

“What do you think, detective?”

“I think I’ve got you where I want you,” he said, and his mouth descended.

“Jack,” I said after a moment, “I need to tell you something.”

“What?”

“Don’t ever hold me down.”

Jack rolled off instantly, his hands up in a surrender position.

“It’s just that you feel so good,” he said. “And… sometimes I think if I don’t weigh you down you’ll just drift away.” He looked off to the side, then back at me. “What the hell did that mean?” he asked, shaking his head at his own fancy.

I knew exactly what he meant.

“I have to go back to the house,” I said. “I’ll be at the O’Sheas’ from about five-thirty on.” I swung myself up and sat with my back to him, since I had to begin getting my clothes out of the heap by the bed.

I felt his hand on my back, stroking. I shivered.

“What are you going to do?” I said over my shoulder, as I bent to retrieve my bra.

“Oh, I have an idea or two,” he said casually. He hooked the bra for me.

Jack was going to do something illegal.

“Like what?” I pulled my shirt over my head.

“Oh… I might get into the doctor’s office tonight.”

“Who would let you in? You can’t possibly be thinking of breaking in?”

“I think it won’t be a problem,” he assured me.

“You know anything you learn that way isn’t real evidence,” I said incredulously. “I’ve watched enough TV to know that.”

“Can you think of another way for me to find out their blood types?”

“Blood types? I thought you said Summer Dawn hadn’t had her blood typed? And are you sure the blood types would be in a file at Dr. LeMay’s office?”

“All three families went to him.”

“But how many kids need to have their blood taken?”

“You said Eve had. If I can eliminate at least one of them, that’ll be good,” he argued. “I realized that there were only a couple of blood types she could be. In fact, it was Chandler’s discussion of your high school biology class that reminded me.”

“What blood type would Summer Dawn be?”

“Her mother’s A and her father’s O. So Summer has to be A or O.” Jack had been consulting a page from a sheaf of Xeroxed material.

“So if Anna and Eve are type B or AB, they can’t be Summer Dawn. It would have to be Krista.”

“Right.”

“I hope it isn’t Anna,” I said, sorry immediately I’d said it out loud, and with that edge of desperation in my voice.

“I hope not, too, for your sister’s sake,” Jack said briskly, and I was even sorrier I’d said anything. I could feel him shoving off my fear, reminding me he had a job to do that he was compelled to finish. I hated the necessity for the reminder. “Here, here’s your sock.”

“Jack, what if they’re all A or O?” I took the sock from him and pulled it on. I had my shoe tied before he answered.

“I don’t know. I’ll think of something,” he said, but not with any hope in his voice. “Maybe that’s not the way to go. I’ll call Aunt Betty and see if she’s got any ideas. I’ll be in and out, so try here if you need me. Something’s gotta break tonight.”

Before I left my folks’ house for the O’Sheas‘, I dialed a Shakespeare number to talk to my friend Carrie Thrush. As I’d hoped, she was still at her office, having seen her last patient just minutes before.

“How are you?”

“Fine,” she said, surprise in her voice. “I’ll be glad when flu season is over.”

“The house is okay?” Carrie had agreed to stop by once or twice, check to make sure the mail carrier had obeyed my “stop mail” card. I hadn’t thought it was much of an imposition, since she was dating Claude Friedrich, who lived in the apartment next door. In fact, I would have asked Claude himself to do it if he hadn’t been still limping from a leg injury.

“Lily, your house is fine,” Carrie said, good-humored toleration in her low voice. “How are you doing?”

“OK,” I said grudgingly.

“Well, we’ll be glad to see you come home. Oh, you’ll want to know this! Old Mr. Winthrop died yesterday, out at his place. He had a massive heart attack at the supper table. Arnita said he just slumped over in the sweet potatoes. She called nine-one-one, but it was too late.”

I figured the whole Winthrop family had to be relieved that the old tyrant was dead, but it wouldn’t be decent to admit it.

“That family has been through everything this year,” Carrie commented, not at all put off by my lack of response.

“I saw Bobo before I left,” I told her.

“His Jeep went by your house twice yesterday evening.”

“Hmmm.”

“He’s carrying a big torch.”

I cleared my throat. “Well, he’ll meet a gal his own age who doesn’t kowtow to him because he’s a Winthrop. He’s just nineteen.”

“Right.” Carrie sounded amused. “Besides, you have your own private dick.” This was Carrie’s little term for Jack. She thought it was really funny. She was definitely smiling on the other end of the line. “How is your family?” she asked.

“This wedding has got everyone crazy.”

“And speaking of Jack, have you heard from him?”

“He-ahhh-he’s here.”

“There? In Bartley?” Carry was startled and impressed.

“It’s work,” I said hastily. “He’s got a job here.”

“Right. How coincidental!”

“True,” I told her warningly. “He’s working.”

“So you haven’t seen him at all, I’m sure.”

“Oh, well… a couple of times.”

“He come by the house?”

“Yes. He did.”

“Met your parents,” she prompted.

“Well, OK, he did.”

“O-kay.” She drew out the word as if she’d proved a point. “He coming back to Shakespeare with you?”

“Yes.”

“For Christmas?”

“Yes.”

“Way to go, Lily!”

“We’ll see,” I said skeptically. “And you? You’ll be there?”

“Yes, I’m cooking and Claude is coming to my house. I was going to go to my folks‘, even though it’s such a long drive, but when I found out Claude was going to be on his own, I told them I’d have to see them in the spring.”

“Moving fast, there.”

“Nothing to stop us, is there? He’s in his forties and I’m in my midthirties.”

I said, “No point taking it slow.”

“Damn straight!” Carrie’s voice grew muffled as she told her nurse to call someone and give him his test results. Then her voice grew clearer. “So you’re coming home when?”

“The day after the wedding,” I said firmly. “I can’t stand it another minute.”

She laughed. “See you then, Lily.”

“OK. Thanks for checking the house.”

“No problem.”

We said good-bye and hung up, both with a few things to think about.

I could tell that Carrie’s relationship with Chief of Police Claude Friedrich was flourishing. I hoped it would last. I’d liked both of them for months before they’d ever looked at each other.

I found myself wondering how Bobo was feeling about the death of his grandfather. I was sure he felt some grief, but it must be at least a little mixed with relief. Now Bobo and his parents would have some peace, some time to recoup. It was almost possible they would rehire me.

I dragged myself back to the here and now. It was nearly time for me to go to my baby-sitting stint. I would be in the O’Sheas’ house; I could search it as I had the Kingery house and the Osborn house. I was staring at myself in the mirror in the bathroom, refluffing my hair and powdering my face, when I finally registered how miserable I looked.

Couldn’t be helped.

In my room, I pulled on my Christmas sweatsuit, the one I’d worn in the parade. I guess I thought the bright color might make me seem more kid-friendly. I ate a bowl of leftover fruit salad, all that I could find in the refrigerator since everyone else in the house was going to the supper.

Dill’s friend Berry Duff rang the doorbell while I was washing up, and I let him in. He smiled down at me.

“You look cheerful,” he remarked.

“I’m going to baby-sit.”

His face fell. “Oh, I was looking forward to talking to you at the dinner.”

“Last-minute emergency. The baby-sitter came down with the flu and they couldn’t find another one.”

“I hope it goes smoothly,” Berry said, rather doubtfully, I thought. “I have kids of my own, and a handful at a time is kind of a rough evening.”

“How old are yours?” I asked politely.

“I got one who’s nine, one who’s in the tenth grade… let’s see… Daniel’s fifteen now. They’re both good kids. I don’t get to see them often enough.”

I remembered that his wife had custody of the children. “Do they live close enough for you to see them regularly?” I asked.

“Every other weekend,” he answered. He looked sad and angry. “That’s just not as good, nowhere near as good, as watching them grow up every day.” He folded himself into one of the kitchen chairs, and I returned to the sink to finish drying the dishes.

“But you know where they are,” I said, surprising even myself. “You know that they’re safe. You can pick up the phone and call them.”

Berry stared at me in understandable surprise. “That’s true,” he said slowly, feeling his way. “I’m sure the situation could be worse. You’re saying, if my wife ran off with them, went underground, like some spouses do to keep the other parent away from the kids? That would be horrible. I guess I’d just go crazy.” Berry mulled it over for a minute. “I’d do anything to get them back, if that happened,” he concluded. He looked up at me. “My God, girl, how did we get on this depressing topic? This is supposed to be a happy household! Wedding tomorrow!”

“Yes,” I said. “Wedding tomorrow.” I had to be resolute. This was not a problem I could solve by hitting or kicking. I puzzled Berry further by patting his shoulder, before I pulled on my coat and called good-bye to my parents.

I thought there was something I’d forgotten to tell Jack today, something small but important. But I couldn’t make it float to the surface of my mind.

The O’Sheas had plenty of room in the Presbyterian manse, since the preacher for whom the home had been built had been the father of five. Of course, that had been in 1938. Now the manse was an underinsulated money pit in need of complete rewiring, Lou told me within the first five minutes after my arrival. I could see that she had some legitimate gripes, because the long, narrow shape of the living area made it hard to group furniture, just for starters. And though there was a fireplace, and it was decorated for the season, the chimney needed so much repair that it wasn’t functional.

The preacher’s wife was encased in a sage green suit and black suede pumps. Her dark hair was carefully turned under all the way around in a smooth pageboy, and her ski-jump nose had been minimized by some subtle makeup. Lou was clearly looking forward to getting out of her house without the kids in tow, but just as clearly she was little anxious about my keeping them. She was doing her best not to show her worry, but the third time she pointed out the list of emergency phone numbers right by the telephone, I had a very sharp answer practically tottering on the edge of my tongue.

Instead, of course, I took a cleansing breath and nodded. But there may have been something grim in the set of my mouth, because Lou did a double take and apologized profusely for being overprotective. To cut short her apologies, she bent to plug in the Christmas tree, which almost filled a quarter of the room.

The lights began to blink.

I clenched my teeth to keep from saying something Lou was sure to find unacceptable.

The manse seemed as commercial as any other house tricked out for the season, with long plastic candy canes propped on either side of the nonfunctional hearth, where fireplace tools would ordinarily stand. A silver garland was draped between the corners of the mantelpiece, and Lou had hung long plastic icicles from the garland.

Opposite the hearth was a central window before which the tree was positioned. However, under the tree, instead of presents there stood a nativity scene, with a wooden stable and a full complement of shepherds, Joseph and Mary, camels and cows, and the baby Jesus in a manger.

Handsome Jess strode into the room, wearing a dark suit enlivened by a fancy Christmas vest. He was carrying Meredith Osborn’s baby, Jane, and Jane was not happy.

It was time for me to prove my worth. I steeled myself to hold out my arms, and he placed the shrieking Jane in them.

“Is she due for a bottle?” I yelled.

“No,” bellowed Jess, “I just fed her.”

Then she needed burping. After eating came burping, then excreting, then sleeping. This was what I had learned about babies. I turned Jane so she was upright and pointed over my shoulder and began patting her gently with my right hand. Little red-faced thing… she was so tiny. Jane had wisps of curling blond hair here and there on her smooth head. Her eyes were squeezed shut with rage, but as soon as I turned her upright she seemed to be crying with less volume. Her little eyes opened and looked hazily at me.

“Hi,” I said, feeling I should talk to her.

The other children came piling into the room. Krista’s little brother Luke was a cement block of a toddler, so square and heavy that he stomped rather than walked. He was dark-haired like Lou, but he would have the heavy-jawed good looks of his father.

The most amazing belch erupted from the baby. Her body relaxed against my shoulder, which suddenly felt wet.

“Oh, dear,” Lou said. “Oh, Lily…”

“Should have slung a diaper over your shoulder.” Jess’s advice was just a little too late.

I looked directly into the baby’s eyes, and she made one of those little baby noises. Her tiny hands flailed the air.

“I’ll hold her while you clean up,” Eve volunteered, while Krista said, “Ewww! Look at the white stuff on Miss Lily’s shoulder!”

“Sit in the chair,” I told Eve.

Eve settled herself in the nearest armchair, her legs crossed on the seat. I settled Eve’s sister into her lap and checked to make sure that Eve was holding the baby correctly. She was.

Followed by the herd of kids, I went to the bathroom, got a washcloth out of the linen closet, and dampened it to rub the worst of the belched liquid off my shoulder. I didn’t want to smell it all night. Krista kept up a running commentary the whole time, Anna seemed conflicted between being sympathetic toward her future aunt and rolling in the grossness of baby throw up like Krista, and Luke just stared while holding his left ear with his left hand and gripping the hair on the top of his head with his right, a posture that made him look like he was receiving signals from another planet.

I realized that Luke was probably still wearing diapers, too.

The O’Sheas called good-bye as they escaped from the houseful of children, and I tossed the washrag into the dirty clothes hamper and glanced at my watch. It was time to change Jane.

I settled Luke in the far end of the living room in front of the television, watching a Christmas cartoon and communicating with Mars. He chose to sit almost inside the branches of the Christmas tree. The blinking didn’t seem to bother him.

The girls all followed me to the baby’s room. Eve was proprietary because the baby was her sister, Krista was hoping to see poop so she could provide running commentary on its grossness, and Anna was still waiting to see which way the wind blew.

Grabbing a fresh disposable diaper, I placed the baby on the changing table and went through the laborious and complicated process of unsnapping the crotch of Jane’s sleeper. Mentally reviewing how I’d changed the Althaus baby, I opened the pull tabs on the old diaper, lifted Jane by the legs, removed the soiled diaper, pulled a wipe from the box on the end of the changing table, cleaned the pertinent areas, and pushed the new diaper under Jane. I ran the front part between her tiny legs, pulled the adhesive tabs shut, and reinserted the baby into the sleeper, getting the snaps wrong only one time.

The three girls decided this was boring. I watched them troop through the door to go to Krista’s room. They were so superficially similar, yet so different. All were eight years old, give or take a few months; all were within three inches of being the same height; they had brown hair and brown eyes. But Eve’s hair was long and looked as if someone had taken a curling iron to it, and Eve was thin and pale. Krista, blocky and with higher color, had short, thick, darker hair and a more decisive demeanor. Her jaw jutted out like she was about to take it on the chin. Anna had shoulder-length light brown hair, a medium build, and a ready smile.

One of these three little girls was not who she thought she was. Her parents were not the people she had always identified as her parents. Her home was not really her home; she belonged elsewhere. She was not the oldest child in the family but the youngest. Everything in her life had been a lie.

I wondered what Jack was doing. I hoped whatever it was, he wouldn’t get caught.

I carried the baby into the living room with me. Luke was still absorbed in the television, but he half turned as I entered and asked me for a snack.

With the attention to detail you have to have around kids, I put Jane in her infant seat, fastened the strap and buckle arrangement that prevented her from falling out, and fetched Luke a banana from the chaotic kitchen.

“I want chips. I don’t like nanas,” he said.

I exhaled gently. “If you eat your banana, I’ll get you some chips,” I said as diplomatically as I am able. “After supper. I’ll be putting supper on the table in just a minute.”

“Miss Lily!” shrieked Eve. “Come look at us!”

Ignoring Luke’s continued complaints about bananas, I strode down the hall to the room that must be Krista’s, judging from all the signs on the door warning Luke never to come in.

It didn’t seem possible the girls could have done so much to themselves in such a short time. Both Krista and Anna were daubed with makeup and swathed in full dress-up regalia: net skirts, feathered hats, tiny high heels. Eve, sitting on Krista’s bed, was much more modestly decked out, and she wore no makeup at all.

I looked at Krista’s and Anna’s lurid faces and had a flash of horror before I realized that if all this stuff had been in Krista’s room, this must be an approved activity.

“You look… charming,” I said, having no idea what an acceptable response would be.

“I’m the prettiest!” Krista said insistently.

If the basis for selection was heavy makeup, Krista was right.

“Why don’t you wear makeup, Miss Lily?” Eve asked.

The three girls crowded around and analyzed my face.

“She’s got mascara on,” Anna decided.

“Red stuff? Rouge?” Krista was peering at my cheeks.

“Eye shadow,” Eve said triumphantly.

“More isn’t always better,” I said, to deaf ears.

“If you wore a lot of makeup, you’d be beautiful, Aunt Lily,” Anna said surprisingly.

“Thank you, Anna. I’d better go see how the baby is.”

Luke had unsnapped the baby’s sleeper and pulled it from her tiny feet. He was bending over her with a pair of tiny, sharp fingernail scissors.

“What are you doing, Luke?” I asked when I could draw my breath.

“I’m gonna help you out,” he said happily. “I’m gonna cut baby Jane’s toenails.”

I shuddered. “I appreciate your wanting to help. But you have to wait for Jane’s daddy to say whether or not he wants you to do that.” That seemed pretty diplomatic to me.

Luke insisted vehemently that Jane’s long toenails were endangering her life and had to be trimmed now.

I began to dislike this child very seriously.

“Listen to me,” I said quietly, cutting right through all his justification.

Luke shut right up. He looked plenty scared.

Good.

“Don’t touch the baby unless I ask you to,” I said. I thought I was making a simple declarative sentence, but possibly Luke was good at interpreting voice tone. He dropped the scissors. I picked them up and shoved them in my sweatpants pocket where I could be certain he wouldn’t reclaim them.

I picked up the infant seat and took Jane into the kitchen with me to set out the children’s meal. Lou had left canned funny-shaped pasta in sauce, which I wouldn’t have fed to my dog, if I’d had one. I heated it, trying not to inhale. I spooned it into bowls, then cut squares of Jell-O and put them on plates, adding apple slices that Lou had already prepared. I poured milk.

The kids ran in and scooted into chairs the minute I called them, even Luke. Without prompting, they all bowed their heads and said the “God is great” prayer in unison. I was caught flat-footed, halfway to the refrigerator to put the milk carton away.

The next fifty minutes were… trying.

I understand that close to Christmas children get excited. I realize that children in packs are more excitable than children separately. I have heard that having a sitter instead of parental supervision causes kids to push their limits, or rather, their sitter’s. But I had to take several deep breaths as the kids rampaged through their supper. I perched on a stool, baby Jane in her infant seat on the kitchen counter beside me. Jane, at least, was asleep. A sleeping baby is a near-perfect thing.

As I wiped up slopped tomato sauce, put more sliced apples into Luke’s bowl, stopped Krista from poking Anna with a spoon, I gradually became aware that Eve was quieter than the others. She had to make a visible effort to join in the hilarity.

Of course, her mother had just died.

So I kept a wary eye on Eve.

Far from planning to learn something that evening, I was beginning to hope merely to survive it. I’d thought I’d get a moment to look for family records. That was so clearly impossible, I was convinced I’d leave as ignorant as when I’d come.

Krista took care of the problem for me.

Reaching for the crackers I’d set in the center of the table, she knocked over her milk, which cascaded off the table into Anna’s lap. Anna shrieked, called Krista a butthead, and darted a terrified glance at me. This was not approved language in the Kingery household, and since I was almost her aunt, I gave Anna the obligatory stern look.

“Do you have a change of pants here?” I asked.

“Yes ma’am,” said a subdued Anna.

“Krista, you wipe up the milk with this towel while I take Anna to change. I’ll need to put those pants right in the washer.”

I picked up the baby in her infant seat and carried her with me down the hall, trying not to jostle her from her sleep. Anna hurried ahead of me, wanting to change and get back to her friends.

I could tell that Anna was not comfortable taking off her clothes with me in the room, but we’d done a little bonding that morning and she didn’t want to hurt my feelings by asking me to leave. God knows I hated invading anyone’s privacy, but I had to do it. After I found a safe spot on the floor for Jane, I picked up the room while Anna untied her shoes and divested herself of her socks, pants, and panties. I had my back to her, but I was facing a mirror when her panties came down, and since she had her back to me, I was able to see clearly the dark brown splotch of the birthmark on her hip.

I had to lean against the wall. A wave of relief almost bowled me over. Anna having that birthmark simply had to mean that Anna was the baby in the birth picture with her mother and Dill, their original and true child, and not Summer Dawn Macklesby.

I had something to be thankful for, after all.

I picked up the wet clothes, and Anna, having pulled on some dry ones, dashed out of the room to finish her supper.

I was about to pick up Jane when Eve came in. She stood, her arms behind her back, looking at her shoes. Something about the way she was standing put me on full alert.

“Miss Lily, you remember that day you came to our house and cleaned up?” she asked, as though it had been weeks before.

I stood stock still. I saw myself opening the box on the shelf…

“Wait,” I told her. “I want to talk to you. Wait just one moment.”

The nearest telephone, and the one that was the most private, was the one in the master bedroom across the hall.

I looked through the phone book, found the number of Jack’s motel. Please let him be there, please let him be there…

Mr. Patel connected me to Jack’s room. Jack answered on the second ring.

“Jack, open your briefcase,” I said.

Some assorted sounds over the other end.

“OK, it’s done.”

“The picture of the baby.”

“Summer Dawn? The one that was in the paper?”

“Yes, that one. What is the baby wearing?”

“One of those one-piece things.”

“Jack, what does it look like?”

“Ah, long arms and legs, snaps…”

“What is the pattern?”

“Oh. Little animals, looks like.”

I took a deep, deep breath. “Jack, what kind of animal?”

“Giraffes,” he said, after a long, analytical pause.

“Oh God,” I said, scarcely conscious of what I was saying.

Eve came into the bedroom. She had picked up the baby and brought her with her. I looked at her white face, and I am sure I looked as stricken as I felt.

“Miss Lily,” she said, and her voice was limp and a little sad. “My dad’s at the door. He came to get us.”

“He’s here,” I said into the phone and hung up.

I got on my knees in front of Eve. “What were you going to tell me?” I asked. “I was wrong to go use the phone when you were waiting to talk to me. Tell me now.”

My intensity was making her nervous, I could see, but it wasn’t something I could turn off. At least she knew I was taking her seriously.

“He’s here now, it’s… I have to go home.”

“No, you need to tell me.” I said it as gently as I could, but firmly.

“You’re strong,” she said slowly. Her eyes couldn’t meet mine. “My dad said my mom was weak. But you’re not.”

“I’m strong.” I said it flatly, with as much assurance as I could pack into a statement.

“Maybe… you could tell him me and Jane need to spend the night here, like we were supposed to? So he won’t take us home?”

She’d intended to tell me something else.

I wondered how much time I had before Emory came to find out what was keeping us.

“Why don’t you want to go home?” I asked, as if we had all the time in the world.

“Maybe if he really wanted me to come, Jane could stay here with you?” Eve asked, and suddenly tears were trembling in her eyes. “She’s so little.”

“He won’t get her.”

Eve looked almost giddy with relief.

“You don’t want to go,” I said.

“Please, no,” she whispered.

“Then he won’t get you.”

Telling a father he couldn’t have his kids was not going to go over well. I hoped Jack had found something, or Emory would make that one wrong move.

He’d have to. He’d have to be provoked.

Time to take my gloves off.

“Stay here,” I told Eve. “This may get kind of awful, but I’m not letting anyone take you and Jane out of this house.”

Eve suddenly looked frightened by what she had unleashed, realizing on some level that the monster was out of the closet now, and nothing would make it go back in. She had taken her life, and her sister’s, in her own hands at the ripe old age of eight. I am sure she was wishing she could take back her words, her appeal.

“It’s out of your hands now,” I said. “This is grown-up stuff.”

She looked relieved, and then she did something that sent shivers down my back: She picked up the baby in her carrier and took her to a corner of the bedroom, pulling out the straight-backed chair that blocked it, crouching down behind it with the baby beside her.

“Throw Reverend O’Shea’s bathrobe over the chair,” the little voice suggested. “He won’t find us, maybe.”

I felt my whole body clench. I picked up the blue velour bathrobe that Jess had left lying across the foot of the bed and draped it over the chair.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said and went down the hall to the living room, Anna’s milk-stained clothes still under my arm. I tossed them into the washroom as I passed it. I was trying to keep things as normal as I could. There were children here, in my care.

Emory was standing just inside the front door. He was wearing jeans and a short jacket. He’d pulled his gloves off and stuck them in a pocket. His blond hair was brushed smooth, and he looked as if he’d just shaved. It was like… I hesitated to say this, even to myself.

It was like he was here to pick up his date.

His guileless blue eyes met mine with no hesitation. Luke, Anna, and Krista were playing a video game at the other end of the room.

“Hey, Miss Bard.” He looked a little puzzled. “I sent Eve back to tell you I’d decided the girls should spend the night at home, after all. I’ve imposed on the O’Sheas too much.”

I walked over to the television. I had to turn off the screen before the children would look at me. Krista and Luke were surprised and angry, though they were too well raised to say anything. But Anna somehow knew that something was wrong. She stared at me, her eyes as round as quarters, but she didn’t ask any questions.

“You three go back and play in Krista’s room,” I said. Luke opened his mouth to protest, took a second look at me, and jumped up to run back to his sister’s room. Krista gave me a mutinous glare, but when Anna, casting several backward looks, followed Luke, Krista left too.

Emory had moved closer to the hall leading down to the bedrooms. He was leaning on the mantel, in fact. He’d pulled off his jacket. He was still smiling gently at the children as they passed him. I moved closer.

“The girls are going to stay here tonight,” I said.

His smile began to twitch around the edges. “I can take my children when I want, Miss Bard,” he told me. “I’d thought I needed time alone with my sister to plan the funeral service, but she had to go home to Little Rock tonight, so I want my girls to come home.”

“The girls are going to stay here tonight.”

“Eve!” he bellowed suddenly. “Come out here right now!”

I heard the children in Krista’s room fall silent.

“Stay where you are!” I called, hoping each and every one of them understood I meant it.

“How can you tell me I can’t have my kids?” Emory looked almost tearful, not angry, but there was something in the way he was standing that kept me on the edge of wary.

Truth or dare. “I can tell you that so easy, Emory,” I said. “I know about you.”

Something scary flared in his expression for just a second. “What the heck are you talking about?” he said, permitting himself to show a reasonable anger and disgust. “I came to get my little girls! You can’t keep my little girls if I want them!”

“Depends on what you want them for, you son of a bitch.”

It was the bad language that cracked Emory’s facade.

He came at me then. He grabbed one of the plastic icicles suspended from the garland on the O’Sheas’ mantel, and if I hadn’t caught his wrist, it would have been embedded in my neck. I overbalanced while I was keeping the tip away from my throat, and over we went. As Emory and I hit the floor with a thud, I could hear the children begin to wail, but it seemed far away and unimportant just now. I’d fallen sideways, and my right hand was trapped.

Emory was small and looked frail, but he was stronger than I’d expected. I was gripping his forearm with my left hand, keeping the hard plastic away from my neck, knowing that if he succeeded in driving it in I would surely die. His other hand fastened around my neck, and I heard my own choking noises.

I wrenched my shoulder in a desperate effort to pull my right hand out from under my body. Finally it was free, and I found my pocket. I pulled out the nail scissors and sunk them into Emory’s side.

He howled and yanked sideways, and somehow I lost the scissors. But now I had two free hands. With both of them I forced his right hand back, heaved myself against him, and over we rolled with me on top but with his left hand still digging into my throat. I pushed his right arm back and down, though his braced left arm kept me too far away to force it to the ground and break it. I struggled to straddle him and finally managed it. By now I was seeing a wash of gray strewn with spots instead of living room furniture. I pushed up on my knees and then let my weight fall down on him as hard as I could. The air whooshed out of Emory’s lungs then, and he was trying to gasp for oxygen, but I thought maybe I would give out first. I raised up and collapsed on him again, but like a snake he took advantage of my movement to start to roll on his side, and since I was pushing his right arm in that direction, I went, too, and now we were on the floor under the Christmas tree, the tiny colored lights blinking, blinking.

I could see the lights blinking through the gray fog, and they maddened me.

Abruptly, I let go of Emory’s arm and snatched a loop of lights from the tree branches. I swung the loop around Emory’s neck, but I wasn’t able to switch hands to give myself a good cross pull. He drove the tip of the plastic icicle into my throat.

The plastic tip was duller than a knife, and I am muscular, so it still hadn’t penetrated by the time the string of blinking lights around Emory’s neck began to take effect.

He took his left hand from my throat to claw at the lights, his major error since I’d been right on the verge of checking out of consciousness. I was able to roll my head to the side to minimize the pressure of the icicle. I was doing much better until Emory, scrabbling around with that left hand, seized the stable of the manger scene and brought it down on my head.

I was out only a minute, but in that minute the room had emptied and the house had grown silent. I rolled to my knees and pushed up on the couch. I took an experimental step. Well, I could walk. I didn’t know how much more I was capable of doing, but I seized the nearest thing I could strike with, one of the long plastic candy canes that Lou had set on each side of the hearth, and I started down the hall, pressing myself against the wall. I passed the washroom on my left and a closet on my right. The next door on my left was Krista’s room. The door was open.

I cautiously looked around the door frame. The three children were sitting on Krista’s bed, Anna and Krista with their arms around each other, Luke frantically sucking on his fingers and pulling his hair. Krista gave a little shriek when she saw me. I put my finger across my lips, and she nodded in a panicky way. But Anna’s eyes were wide and staring as if she was trying to think of how to tell me something.

I wondered if they would trust me, the mean stranger they didn’t know, or Emory, the sweet man they’d seen around for years.

“Did he find Eve?” I asked, in a voice just above a whisper.

“No, he didn’t,” Emory said and stepped out from behind the door. He’d gone by the kitchen; I saw by the knife in his hand.

Anna screamed. I didn’t blame her.

“Anna,” said Emory. “Sweet little girls don’t make noise.” Anna choked back another scream, scared to death he would get near her, and the resulting sound was terrifying. Emory glanced her way.

I stepped all the way into the room, raised the plastic candy cane, and brought it down on Emory’s arm with all the fury I had in me.

“I’m not sweet,” I said.

He howled and dropped the knife. I put one foot on it and scooted it behind me with the toe of my shoe, just as Emory charged. The plastic candy cane must not have been very intimidating.

This time I was ready, and as he lunged toward me, I stepped to one side, stuck out one foot, and as he stumbled over it, I brought the candy cane down again on the back of his neck.

If the children hadn’t been there I would have kicked him or broken one of his arms, to make sure I wouldn’t have to deal with him again. But the children were there, Luke screaming and wailing with all the abandon of a two-year-old, and Anna and Krista both sobbing.

Would hitting him again be any more traumatic for them? I thought not and raised my foot.

But Chandler McAdoo said, “No.”

All the fight went out of me in a gust. I let the red-and-white-striped plastic fall from my fingers to the carpet, told myself I should comfort the children. But I realized in a dim way that I was not at all comforting right now.

“Eve and Jane are behind the chair in the bedroom across the hall,” I said. I sounded exhausted, even to myself.

“I know,” Chandler said. “Eve called nine-one-one.”

“Miss Lily?” called a tiny, shaky voice.

I made myself plod into the master bedroom. Eve’s head popped up from behind the chair. I sat on the end of the bed.

“You can bring Jane out now,” I said. “Thank you for calling the police. That was so smart, so brave.” Eve pushed the chair out and picked up the infant seat, though now it was almost too heavy for her thin arms.

Chandler shut the door.

It promptly came open again and Jack came in.

He paused and looked me over. “Anything broken?” he asked.

“No.” I shook my head and wondered for a second if I would be able to stop. It felt like pendulum set in motion. I rubbed my throat absently.

“Bruise,” said Jack. I watched him try to decide how to approach me and Eve.

With great effort, I lifted my hand and patted Eve on the head. Then I folded her in my arms as she began to cry.

I sat with Eve in my lap that night as she told the police what had been happening in the yellow house on Fulbright Street. Chandler was there, and Jack-and Lou O’Shea, since Jess had passionately wanted to be there as Eve’s pastor, but Eve had shown a definite preference for Lou.

Daddy, it seemed, had started getting funny when it became apparent that the bills from Meredith’s pregnancy and delivery were going to be substantial. He began to enjoy playing with his eight-year-old daughter.

“He always liked me to wear lipstick and makeup,” Eve said. “He liked me to play dress up all the time.”

“What did your mom have to say about that, Eve?” Chandler asked in a neutral voice.

“She thought it was funny, at first.”

“When did things change?”

“About Thanksgiving, I guess.”

It was just after Thanksgiving that the article about unsolved crimes had appeared in the Little Rock paper. With the picture of the baby in the giraffe sleeper. The same baby sleeper that Meredith had kept all these years in a box on the closet shelf, as a memento of her baby’s first days.

“Mama wasn’t happy. She’d walk around the house and cry. She had a hard time taking care of Jane. She…” Eve’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “She asked me funny questions.”

“About…?” Chandler again.

“About did Daddy touch me funny.”

“Oh. What did you tell her?” Chandler sounded quiet and respectful of Eve, as if this was a very ordinary conversation. I had not known my old friend could be this way.

“No, he never touched me… there. But he liked to play Come Here Little Girl.”

My stomach heaved.

I won’t go through it all, but the gist of it was that Emory liked to deck Eve in lipstick and rouge and call her over to him as if they were strangers and induce her to touch him through his pants.

“So what else happened?” Chandler asked after a moment.

“He and Mama had a fight. Mama said they had to talk about when I was born, and Daddy said he wouldn’t, and Mama said… oh, I don’t remember.”

Had Meredith asked him if Eve was their baby? Had she asked him if he was molesting the child?

“Then Mama or Daddy got my memory book and took a page out of it. I didn’t see them do it, but when I got home one day, the page was missing, my favorite picture of me and Anna and Krista. It had been cut out real neat, so I think Mama did it. So the next time I spent the night with Anna, I took it over there with me, so Mama couldn’t cut out any more pages.”

Jack and I met each other’s eyes.

“Then Mama said I needed a blood test. So I went to Dr. LeMay, and he and Miss Binnie took some blood and said they were going to test it, and I had sure been a good girl, and he gave me a piece of candy.

“Mama told me not to tell anyone, but Daddy saw the needle mark when he bathed me that night! But I didn’t tell, I didn’t!” Big tears rolled down Eve’s cheeks.

“No one thinks you did anything wrong,” I said.

I hadn’t realized how tense she was until she relaxed.

“So Daddy found out. I think he went looking and found the paper Mama got from the doctor.”

The lab results? A receipt for whatever Meredith had paid for the blood test?

“So the next night he said Mama needed a break and he was going to take us out.”

“And you got in the car, right?” Chandler asked.

“Yep, me and Jane. I was buckling her car seat when Daddy said he’d left his gloves. He opened the trunk and got something out and put it on, and he went in the house. After a few minutes he came back out with something under his arm, and he put it in the trunk and we went out to eat. When we got home…” Eve began to cry in earnest then.

Chandler slipped out with Emory’s keys to open Emory’s trunk. He came back in five minutes.

“I got some people looking and taking pictures,” he said quietly. “Come on, sweetie, let’s put you on a bed for a little while, so you can lie still.”

Lou, who had tears running down her face, held out her arms to Eve, and Eve allowed Lou to pick her up and carry her off.

“What was in the trunk?” Jack asked.

“A clear plastic raincoat with lots of stains and a single-edge kitchen knife.”

I shuddered.

Jack and Chandler began to have a very important talk.

Chandler called over to the men searching the house on Fulbright Street. In about thirty minutes, thin Detective Brainerd brought a familiar shoe box into the bedroom at the manse.

Jack put on gloves, opened the box, and began to smile.

Dill and Varena had taken Anna home long before, and I could assume they’d made a report to my parents about where I was.

Jack dropped me at his motel room while he went to the jail to have a conversation with Emory Osborn.

When he returned, I was still lying on the bed staring at the ceiling. I still had my coat on. My throat hurt.

Without speaking, Jack consulted an address book he fished out of his briefcase. Then he picked up the phone, took a deep breath, and began dialing.

“Roy? How you doing? Yeah, I know what time it is. But I thought you should be the one to call Teresa and Simon. Tell them we got the little girl… of course I wouldn’t kid about something like that. No, I don’t want to call them, it’s your case.” Jack held the phone away from his ear, and I could hear Roy Costimiglia shouting on the other end. When the sound had abated a little, Jack started talking, telling Roy as much as he could in a few sentences.

“No, I don’t know… they better call their lawyer, have her come down before they come down. I think there’s a lot of steps to go through, but Osborn actually admitted it. Yeah.” Jack eased back on the bed until he was lying beside me, his body snug against mine. “He delivered his own baby at home, and the baby died. I think there’s something kinda hinky about that, it was a baby boy… and he definitely likes little girls. Anyway, he felt guilty and he couldn’t tell his wife. He gave her a strong painkiller he’d been taking for a back injury, she conked out, he began riding around trying to think of how to tell her the baby didn’t make it. He lived right close to Conway, and he found himself just cruising through Conway at random, he says. Yeah, I don’t know whether to buy that, either, especially in view… wait, let me finish.” Jack pulled off his shoes. “He says he rode through the Macklesbys’ neighborhood, recognized the house because he’d delivered a couch there about four months before. He liked Teresa, thought she was pretty. Suddenly he remembered that Teresa had been pregnant, wondered if she’d had the baby… he watched the house for a while, says he was too distraught to go home and face his wife. Suddenly, he got his chance to make everything better. He saw Teresa come out onto the porch with the baby in her carrier, stop, put her down, and go back in the house. She was such a bad mother she didn’t deserve a baby, he decided, and she already had two, anyway. His wife didn’t have one. He took Summer Dawn home with him.”

Roy must have been talking again. I could feel my eyes grow heavy now that Jack’s warmth relaxed me. I turned on my side facing him, my eyes closing just for a minute since he had the bedside lamp on and the glare was unpleasant.

“He took Meredith to the doctor the next day, told the doctor that he’d taken the baby to a pediatrician already. He couldn’t have their doctor examine the baby, because he figured that the umbilical thingy was more healed than it would be on a one-day-old baby.”

Roy talked for a minute. It was a distant buzz. I kept my eyes shut.

“Yeah, he’s confessed all the way. Says it was all his wife’s fault for having a baby that died and it being a boy, for interrupting his fun with the little girl he’d so thoughtfully gotten for her, for beginning to wonder where that little girl had come from when she saw the photo in the paper… evidently, Meredith took the little girl in for a blood test, found out she couldn’t be her daughter. But she loved her so much, she couldn’t make up her mind what to do. Emory found out about the blood test, decided Meredith was a traitor, and killed her. He broke into my hotel room, found the pages she’d mailed me… it made him feel justified.”

Some more talk.

Then Jack asked, “You gonna call them now or wait till the morning?”

Sometime after that, I lost track of what Jack was saying.

“Baby?”

I blinked. “What?”

“Baby, it’s morning.”

“What?”

“You got to go home and get ready for the wedding, Lily.”

My eyes flew open. It was definitely daytime. In a panic, I glanced at the bedside clock. I exhaled a long sigh of relief when I saw it was only eight o’clock.

Jack was standing by the bed. He’d just gotten out of the shower.

Normally in the morning I jump out of bed and get moving, but I felt so groggy. Then I remembered the night before, and I knew where I was.

“Oh, I do have to get home, I hope they’re not worried,” I said. “I’ve been so good this whole visit, I’ve done everything right! I hate to blow it the last day.”

Jack laughed. It was a good sound.

I sat up. He’d taken my coat off some time during the night. I’d slept in my clothes, with no shower, and I needed to brush my teeth in the worst possible way. When Jack bent down to hug me, I backed off.

“No no no,” I said firmly. “Not now. I’m disgusting.”

When Jack saw I meant it, he perched in one of the vinyl chairs. “Want me to go get us some coffee?” he asked.

“Oh, bless you for thinking of it, but I better get to my folks’ and let them see me.”

“Then I’ll see you at the wedding.”

“Sure.” I reached out, stroked his arm. “What were you doing last night?”

“While you were confronting the real kidnapper?” Jack looked at me darkly. “Well, sweetheart, I was rear-ending your soon-to-be brother-in-law.”

“What?”

“I decided the only way to look inside the car trunks- which, if you’ll remember, was your suggestion-was to have a little accident with the cars involved. It would be reasonable to look in the trunk after that. I figured if I hit them just right, the trunk would open anyway.”

“Did you hit Jess?”

“Yep.”

“And Dill, too?”

“I was about to. But I was thinking I’d get whiplash, so I’d decided just to out-and-out break into Emory’s. Then I got your call. I got to the O’Sheas’ house just as your ex-boyfriend was pulling up. He cuffed me.”

“He what?”

“I didn’t want him going in ahead of me, so he cuffed me.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was trying not to smile.

“I better go get cleaned up,” I told him. “You’ll be there?”

“I brought my suit,” he reminded me.

The only day it was possible for my parents not to cast me disapproving looks was Varena’s wedding day. They were not excited that Jack had dropped me off in front of the house in broad daylight, with me wearing yesterday’s clothes.

But in the melee of the wedding day-and the day before-it could be legitimately ignored.

I took a very long shower and brushed my teeth twice. To regain control of myself, I shaved my legs and armpits, plucked my eyebrows, spent ten or fifteen minutes putting on lotions and makeup.

It was only after I came into the kitchen in my bathrobe to drink some coffee that my mother spotted the bruise.

She put her own mug down with a clunk.

“Your neck, Lily.”

I looked in a little mirror in the hall outside the kitchen. My neck had a spectacular dark bruise.

“Emory,” I explained, for the first time noticing how hoarse my voice was. I touched the dark splotch. Sore. Very sore.

“It’s OK,” I said, “really. Just need to drink something hot.”

And that’s all we said about the night before.

It was the best luck I ever had, that day being Varena’s wedding day.

And the next morning, Christmas Day, I drove home to Shakespeare.

I thought during the drive: I thought what would become of the baby, Jane, whom Eve (I had to think of her as Eve Osborn) regarded as her sister. I wondered what would happen in the days to come, when the Macklesbys would finally get to put their arms around their daughter. I wondered when I’d have to go back to testify at Emory’s trial. It gave me the cold shakes, thinking of going back to Bartley again, but I would feel more amenable when the time was closer, I hoped.

I didn’t have to talk to anyone or listen to anyone for four whole hours.

The tatty outskirts of Shakespeare were so welcome to my eyes that I almost cried.

The decorations, the smoke coming out of the chimneys, the empty lawns and streets: Today was Christmas.

If my friend Dr. Carrie Thrush had remembered, the turkey would be thawed and waiting to be put in the oven.

And Jack, having detoured to Little Rock to pick up some more clothes, was on his way.

The presents I’d bought him were wrapped and in my closet. The spinach Madeleine, the sweet potato casserole, and the cranberry sauce were in the freezer.

I shed the past as I pulled into my own driveway.

I would have a Shakespeare Christmas.